3.The us Constitution. General Information. History of Creation.

The United States Constitution is the supreme law of the United States of America. The Constitution is interpreted, supplemented, and implemented by a large body of constitutional law. The Constitution of the United States is the first constitution of its kind, and has influenced the constitutions of other nations. When the thirteen British colonies in North America declared their independence in 1776, they laid down that “governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The “colonies” had to establish a government, which would be the framework for the United States. The purpose of a written constitution is to define and therefore more specifically limit government powers. After the Articles of Confederation failed to work in the 13 colonies, the U.S. Constitution was created in 1787. The need for the Constitution grew out of problems with the Articles of Confederation, which established a "firm league of friendship" between the states, and vested most power in a Congress of the Confederation. This power was, however, extremely limited — the central government conducted diplomacy and made war, set weights and measures, and was the final arbiter of disputes between the states. Each state sent a delegation of between two and seven members to the Congress, and they voted as a bloc with each state getting one vote. But any decision of consequence required a unanimous vote, which led to a government that was paralyzed and ineffectual. At the 1787 convention, delegates devised a plan for a stronger federal government with three branches–executive, legislative and judicial–along with a system of checks and balances to ensure no single branch would have too much power. The Bill of Rights–10 amendments guaranteeing basic individual protections such as freedom of speech and religion–became part of the Constitution in 1791. To date, there have been a total of 27 constitutional amendments. The Constitution is important because it was expressly designed to limit powers into three co-ordinate branches, the legislative, executive, and judiciary branch; none of which was to have supremacy over the others. It is one of the world's oldest surviving constitutions.

4.The Bill of Rights

The Bill of Rights - a common name of the first ten amendments to the US Constitution, which guarantees the individual personal rights of citizens and thus limit the powers of public authorities. Amendments have been proposed by James Madison on the first US Congress in 1789, the same year approved by Congress and ratified by the states until the end of 1791. The Bill of Rights was adopted on the initiative of the politicians and journalists, who considered the lack of the Constitution no list of basic individual rights, which in the future could become the basis for the infringement of rights. Originally, the Bill of Rights did not apply to state law. First Amendment right applies only to the legislative powers of Congress. This situation continued until 1868, when it adopted the Fourteenth Amendment, which at the same time with the abolition of slavery in particular found that the applicability of the Bill of Rights on the state level, remained a matter of dispute. In fact, in 1789 it was proposed not ten, and twelve amendments, with the amendments included in the Bill of Rights, were numbered from the third to twelfth. Amendment number one, sets the size of electoral districts, has only been ratified by eleven states (in the period from 1789 to 1792 years) and have not entered into force. Amendment number two, which enshrines the right of that law, which changes the size of the salary of senators and representatives, can not enter into force until new elections to the House of Representatives, was ratified only in 1992 - after more than two hundred years after the adoption, and It was the twenty-seventh amendment.  The first ten amendments to the US Constitution are summarized below.  1 Freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition.  2 Right to keep and bear arms in order to maintain a well-regulated militia.  3 No quartering of soldiers.  4 Freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures.  5 Right to due process of law, freedom from self-incrimination, double jeopardy.  6 Rights of accused persons, eg, right to a speedy and public trial.  7 Right of trial by jury in civil cases.  8 Freedom from excessive bail, cruel and unusual punishments.  9 Other rights of the people.  10 Powers reserved to the states.